I'd have to disagree. On a fairly good system (mine) I can distinguish between vinyl, cassette, CD, and MP3. MP3 is a terrible format. The problem is there really isn't a decent digital source available that's gained acceptance. FLAC is pretty good, but it's not widely available. CD is clean but it's also sacrificing depth and clarity in the conversion to digital in part because 44.1k/16 isn't sufficient resolution and the algorithm for conversion is flawed. DVD-A is better at 96k/24, and BlueRay audio at 192k/24 gets close to vinyl. However, all of the optical media suffers from digital rot over time. Not only that, how many recordings are available in BlueRay audio? You also can't easily transfer it to your phone or play in your car either. Cassette degrades and becomes nasty over time. Tape hiss, drop outs, the deck eats it, etc. Not sure why we'd bring that back. But I definitely find vinyl to be superior in sound quality.
Personally, I prefer something tangible I can put my hands on. Sit down and read the lyrics while holding the album cover in my hands. It's part of the experience for me. Not everyone who is in to vinyl is a hipster. IDGAF about being hip. From a good vinyl source that's been digitized I can create a CD for the car, or FLAC files for my phone. Still when I go home and sit down to enjoy a great album I can hear it the way I prefer. Listening to the digitized copy I preserve the LP so they only get physically played once or twice. There's very little pop and click if you take care of them. And I leave my kids something that will have value decades from now.
Totally. I've gotten to where on the rare occasion when I do watch tv I'll turn it on and pause it, go do something else for a while and then come back so I can FF through all the commercials. And I'm paying $80 per month for this "privilege". I should probably look into these services.
You're assuming a direct correlation between an oil based economy and nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction. While there are entanglements between the two the benefit of MAD is not lost due to decreasing reliance on oil. MAD has been proven to work. We can sign disarmament treaties all day long, but who upholds it? Who ensures all sides are adhering to the agreement so that one country doesn't stand up and say "surprise!" We had an agreement with Iran to not develop nuclear weapons, North Korea as well. For years we gave them billions of dollars while they continued to pursue nuclear weapons in secret. What makes anyone think we can negotiate with them now and have them act honorably? It is to laugh. Our reduced reliance on foreign oil gives us a stronger economic position. We don't have to support these rogue regimes anymore. We can dry up their funding and still maintain our position on the global stage without having to wage war. But that doesn't change the fact that if another country attacks us and we have the capability to respond they stand to be devastated. That deterrence remains in tact. Even crazy people like Un have to understand that he loses everything if he plays that card. Iran too. Sure in the case of Iran they're motivated by Islam, however, they're also pragmatic to a certain extent. While some may be willing to blow up the whole world for a shot at paradise those people aren't typically in leadership roles.
You can guess that all Trump supporters back white supremacists but you'd be wrong. Even Trump himself has denounced those folks. If we want to have a serious conversation let's have it and stop with the false equivalence. I think Trump is way better for our country than someone selling our uranium to Russia for personal gain, and compromising national security to obfuscate her self dealing and pay to play scheme. But perhaps that's because I'm not blinded by the mainstream media who isn't even attempting to hide their bias anymore. I'm in the American boat, and so I don't think America first is an unreasonable position. I can't think of any other country in the world that doesn't put its own interests first. It's just basic common sense. There's nothing racist about it. Everyone looks out for their own interests first. And I don't think Trump wants war. But he's also not afraid to stand up against our enemies and after so many years of capitulation that's a nice change as far as I'm concerned.
I hate to advocate new laws, but if a company knowingly ignores security, takes someone's money, and that person gets hacked because of it that company ought to be on the hook legally. The only way they're going to care is if there's some tangible stake in giving security serious consideration.
That's a false equivalence if I've ever seen one. Most people who play games know that they are just games. There's no evidence to suggest that video games have lead to violent shootings. The people who have engaged in such behavior all have one thing in common. They were all mentally ill. So if we're going to start banning stuff maybe we should start with banning mental illness. We'll just write a law.
That is exactly what treaties do. They are agreements to abide by each other's laws. If we're going to do business globally it's necessary. However, it's also necessary to protect individuals so that one country can't just decide to arbitrarily take someone's stuff. In this case, the dude was totally a jerk and flaunting his disregard for the law essentially daring the US to do something. I took some satisfaction in his downfall I must confess. We still need to honor due process though and not because of his citizenship but because who wants to do business with a country who can potentially just come in and wipe you out with no recourse? We do not want to set that precedent.
For being supposedly so well educated you display an astounding amount of ignorance. All of those things are often stated. Which doesn't make them untrue. Gun laws are so strict in New York it's almost impossible to own a firearm. A state with close to the highest incidence of gun crime in the country dwarfed only by Chicago another shining example of the effectiveness of gun control. You could completely outlaw guns and you will still have this problem.
From what I read it wasn't a machine gun anyway. It had a bump fire stock where the "automation" is performed by the recoil. Those aren't illegal (and shouldn't be).
Define mental health issues though. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder? All of these diagnoses have degrees of severity. Most of them are controllable by medication. If you can drive a car you should be able to own a firearm (as well as be able to fly an airplane). Both can be used to deadly effect. And then lets talk about power tools, sharp knives, axes, extension cords, rocks, lumber, hammers, propane tanks, pressure cookers... If your intention is to kill someone there are lots of things you could use. Where do we stop in our attempt to bubble wrap society? I believe the intense focus on firearms is largely political and driven by the UN agenda. Most gun owners aren't nuts. By percentage the vast majority of gun owners will never misuse their rights, but they're not the ones who make the news.
That hobby you refer to is constitutionally protected because it's more than a hobby. It's a fundamental right to defend yourself against any potential threat up to and including your own government. The framers were keenly aware of just how bad governments can become over time. Just because some jackass misused his right doesn't mean that everyone else should lose theirs. This guy was unknown to Federal Law Enforcement. Which means he likely acquired his guns legally over a number of years. His family said he seemed perfectly normal. There were no indicators. According to them he just snapped. Stricter laws would not have stopped this. There is a possibility he had been recruited and radicalized by ISIS. What laws would have stopped that? Gangbangers acquire weapons outside the law all the time. Fully automatic weapons which could not be obtained legally. They shoot innocent bystanders all the time. What laws fix that problem? As long as you have people with murderous intent you will have murder. Regardless of how many laws and controls you implement.
Actually, his family said he had no political affiliation that they knew of. Not everything is political. It's also worth mentioning that ISIS is taking credit saying he was radicalized months ago. That hasn't been confirmed, but in light of the number of people and lack of explanation it makes sense.
I agree that energy security should be more of a priority. But as someone who actually works on software that controls the electrical grid I can tell you a lot of the problem is management. They want things, don't understand the security ramifications, and then when you point them out they call you paranoid. You could fix that today with $0. R&R defective management. It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we're not allowed to.
The impact is highly dependent on the individual. Which is what makes it dangerous. Some experience no ill effects. Some have vivid and frequent flashbacks years after trying it just once. Regardless of that you are altering your brain chemistry in an unpredictable way that can have permanent results. Every time I did it I felt it changed my personality to a certain degree. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. While it won't kill you it's much like playing psychological Russian roulette.
That's true. But it's hard to get excited just yet. Until the theory is proven it's just another theory. Not insignificant. But not proven success either.
Yes, that's true. But I guess the question comes down to one of reasonability. How much is enough to inspire people to create and innovate, and yet still give consideration to masses of people who struggle to buy food every month? By no means am I a socialist. But a responsible capitalist realizes when he's got a good thing going rather than being blinded by greed.
"If I were a musician I probably wouldn't care how much money I'm making if a group of racial nationalists (or some other group of people, say PETA for example, I just think are assholes for that matter) are using my work as part of their message."
I think this issue is largely overblown. If some joker uses a song I wrote, I would hope my fans are smart enough to figure out that I don't necessarily agree with someone just because they used my song.
You can release your art to the world or keep it all to yourself. But after you release it then it kind of goes where it goes. And there's good and bad in that. I find it somewhat ridiculous that they expect to maintain control and have their art reach as many people as possible. You mention racial nationalists which are high profile. Obviously a group most people would disagree with. Charles Manson coopted Helter Skelter. Does that mean he was endorsed by the Beatles? No, of course not. And most rational people understand that.
The music industry as a whole has changed. The big corporations haven't figured that out yet. All they know is they're hemorrhaging the money they used to make and they don't know why. For years the game was simple. Find decent artist, preferably young and exploitable, sign artist into lopsided contract in return for putting up capital to record, and pay radio to play the crap out of single until millions of copies sold. If artist pisses you off, air play stops and artist goes away.
They had control of every aspect of the game and made billions.
Now anyone with garage band can make an album, market it for free on social media, and make all their money off of shows, t-shirt sales, and the like. Radio is pretty much dead. Streaming services are leveraging back catalogs for music companies but it's no where near the money they used to make. Granted with this new model finding good music is like finding a needle in the haystack. There's a lot of noise. But there's also a lot of interesting art that never would have been released under the previous model because it doesn't fit the maximize profit formula used by the big guys.
I kind of like where we are. Most of the artists I like are adjusting, and we're getting greedy jerks who don't care about music anyway out of the picture. The artist takes all of the pie now and I feel that's how it should be. They're the ones creating it.
Facebook is just looking for another way to potentially monetize it for the dead industry. All the points you list are precisely why it doesn't matter. Do it or don't do it. The sun has already set.
It's most certainly about the fidelity. As someone pushing 50 I have been collecting vinyl since I was a kid. I'm glad to see it coming back. It doesn't really bother me if you don't like it. If you can't distinguish the difference between an LP and MP3 that's your loss I'd say. Granted LP is not portable, requires a really good system to fully appreciate, takes up more space, and degrades over time. All of those are true. But for myself I find it to be a superior format. I like being able to have the full size cover art, and words I can actually see. As my eyes get older I really appreciate that more and more. Usually I record it into the PC using a firewire interface at 96k/24 to a wav file. And then file the record and play the wavs. In this way I reduce wear, and get my portability. And have sound quality that is far superior to CD let alone MP3. DVD-audio is the only digital format that comes close.
I'm not sure where you live but it can't be in the US. I like the US, I don't want to move somewhere else. But let's not pretend there are no problems here.
Tell me all about the rule of law in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
Yes we pay quite a bit for police. They use their funding largely for union protectionism. They're all about writing tickets in the name of safety, but if someone breaks into your house they'll show up 2 hours later to write the report. Live in a place without the castle doctrine? Gee, sucks to be you. But boy we sure got the guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals by creating more laws that the criminals ignore anyway.
Sure you can call the fire department if your house catches fire. They'll come faster than the police but if it's fully involved they're going to let it burn to the ground anyway because it's too dangerous to fight the fire. Another bastion of union protectionism.
Roads? Our infrastructure is falling down. They keep raising the gas tax under the auspices of fixing the roads and then tear the same stretch of road up 5 times over the course of 10 years. The government also withholds the road funds from the state whenever they don't do what they want. They're providing a lot of value there to be sure.
Public education more closely resembles public indoctrination. We keep rewriting the history books to favor an increasingly left wing agenda. We dumb down standards so that we can statistically graduate more students (they don't know anything, but hey the education system got paid and did their job by golly).
The military is necessary, however it's been long well known that if you're ever selling the military anything you bill triple the cost because they'll gladly pay it (hey, it's not like it's their money).
The other stuff you mention is also of various levels of worth mixed in with a whole lot of waste. Healthcare is a joke. The judicial system is a joke. The FDA is a really big joke.
I don't mind paying taxes if we're going to be fiscally responsible. But when things are run the way they are how can you call that anything other than theft? They take our money by force, put us in jail if we don't pay, and then largely fail to do what they promised with the money. The other thing to remember is that before 1920s all of these things were paid by other means. There was no income tax. It was supposed to be temporary. Another promise from a politician.
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You forgot years. It's quite possible he's talking about years. Sounds about like a prison sentence.
I'd have to disagree. On a fairly good system (mine) I can distinguish between vinyl, cassette, CD, and MP3. MP3 is a terrible format. The problem is there really isn't a decent digital source available that's gained acceptance. FLAC is pretty good, but it's not widely available. CD is clean but it's also sacrificing depth and clarity in the conversion to digital in part because 44.1k/16 isn't sufficient resolution and the algorithm for conversion is flawed. DVD-A is better at 96k/24, and BlueRay audio at 192k/24 gets close to vinyl. However, all of the optical media suffers from digital rot over time. Not only that, how many recordings are available in BlueRay audio? You also can't easily transfer it to your phone or play in your car either. Cassette degrades and becomes nasty over time. Tape hiss, drop outs, the deck eats it, etc. Not sure why we'd bring that back. But I definitely find vinyl to be superior in sound quality.
Personally, I prefer something tangible I can put my hands on. Sit down and read the lyrics while holding the album cover in my hands. It's part of the experience for me. Not everyone who is in to vinyl is a hipster. IDGAF about being hip. From a good vinyl source that's been digitized I can create a CD for the car, or FLAC files for my phone. Still when I go home and sit down to enjoy a great album I can hear it the way I prefer. Listening to the digitized copy I preserve the LP so they only get physically played once or twice. There's very little pop and click if you take care of them. And I leave my kids something that will have value decades from now.
Totally. I've gotten to where on the rare occasion when I do watch tv I'll turn it on and pause it, go do something else for a while and then come back so I can FF through all the commercials. And I'm paying $80 per month for this "privilege". I should probably look into these services.
You would of course have to persuade them to agree. Good luck with that.
You're assuming a direct correlation between an oil based economy and nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction. While there are entanglements between the two the benefit of MAD is not lost due to decreasing reliance on oil. MAD has been proven to work. We can sign disarmament treaties all day long, but who upholds it? Who ensures all sides are adhering to the agreement so that one country doesn't stand up and say "surprise!" We had an agreement with Iran to not develop nuclear weapons, North Korea as well. For years we gave them billions of dollars while they continued to pursue nuclear weapons in secret. What makes anyone think we can negotiate with them now and have them act honorably? It is to laugh. Our reduced reliance on foreign oil gives us a stronger economic position. We don't have to support these rogue regimes anymore. We can dry up their funding and still maintain our position on the global stage without having to wage war. But that doesn't change the fact that if another country attacks us and we have the capability to respond they stand to be devastated. That deterrence remains in tact. Even crazy people like Un have to understand that he loses everything if he plays that card. Iran too. Sure in the case of Iran they're motivated by Islam, however, they're also pragmatic to a certain extent. While some may be willing to blow up the whole world for a shot at paradise those people aren't typically in leadership roles. You can guess that all Trump supporters back white supremacists but you'd be wrong. Even Trump himself has denounced those folks. If we want to have a serious conversation let's have it and stop with the false equivalence. I think Trump is way better for our country than someone selling our uranium to Russia for personal gain, and compromising national security to obfuscate her self dealing and pay to play scheme. But perhaps that's because I'm not blinded by the mainstream media who isn't even attempting to hide their bias anymore. I'm in the American boat, and so I don't think America first is an unreasonable position. I can't think of any other country in the world that doesn't put its own interests first. It's just basic common sense. There's nothing racist about it. Everyone looks out for their own interests first. And I don't think Trump wants war. But he's also not afraid to stand up against our enemies and after so many years of capitulation that's a nice change as far as I'm concerned.
I hate to advocate new laws, but if a company knowingly ignores security, takes someone's money, and that person gets hacked because of it that company ought to be on the hook legally. The only way they're going to care is if there's some tangible stake in giving security serious consideration.
That's a false equivalence if I've ever seen one. Most people who play games know that they are just games. There's no evidence to suggest that video games have lead to violent shootings. The people who have engaged in such behavior all have one thing in common. They were all mentally ill. So if we're going to start banning stuff maybe we should start with banning mental illness. We'll just write a law.
That is exactly what treaties do. They are agreements to abide by each other's laws. If we're going to do business globally it's necessary. However, it's also necessary to protect individuals so that one country can't just decide to arbitrarily take someone's stuff. In this case, the dude was totally a jerk and flaunting his disregard for the law essentially daring the US to do something. I took some satisfaction in his downfall I must confess. We still need to honor due process though and not because of his citizenship but because who wants to do business with a country who can potentially just come in and wipe you out with no recourse? We do not want to set that precedent.
Yes, I think he's guilty. However, we still have due process and I think this sets and perpetuates a horrible precedent.
For being supposedly so well educated you display an astounding amount of ignorance. All of those things are often stated. Which doesn't make them untrue. Gun laws are so strict in New York it's almost impossible to own a firearm. A state with close to the highest incidence of gun crime in the country dwarfed only by Chicago another shining example of the effectiveness of gun control. You could completely outlaw guns and you will still have this problem.
From what I read it wasn't a machine gun anyway. It had a bump fire stock where the "automation" is performed by the recoil. Those aren't illegal (and shouldn't be).
In order to find a cure you'd first have to correctly identify the disease. I'll give you a starting hint. It's not the guns.
Define mental health issues though. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder? All of these diagnoses have degrees of severity. Most of them are controllable by medication. If you can drive a car you should be able to own a firearm (as well as be able to fly an airplane). Both can be used to deadly effect. And then lets talk about power tools, sharp knives, axes, extension cords, rocks, lumber, hammers, propane tanks, pressure cookers... If your intention is to kill someone there are lots of things you could use. Where do we stop in our attempt to bubble wrap society? I believe the intense focus on firearms is largely political and driven by the UN agenda. Most gun owners aren't nuts. By percentage the vast majority of gun owners will never misuse their rights, but they're not the ones who make the news.
That hobby you refer to is constitutionally protected because it's more than a hobby. It's a fundamental right to defend yourself against any potential threat up to and including your own government. The framers were keenly aware of just how bad governments can become over time. Just because some jackass misused his right doesn't mean that everyone else should lose theirs. This guy was unknown to Federal Law Enforcement. Which means he likely acquired his guns legally over a number of years. His family said he seemed perfectly normal. There were no indicators. According to them he just snapped. Stricter laws would not have stopped this. There is a possibility he had been recruited and radicalized by ISIS. What laws would have stopped that? Gangbangers acquire weapons outside the law all the time. Fully automatic weapons which could not be obtained legally. They shoot innocent bystanders all the time. What laws fix that problem? As long as you have people with murderous intent you will have murder. Regardless of how many laws and controls you implement.
Actually, his family said he had no political affiliation that they knew of. Not everything is political. It's also worth mentioning that ISIS is taking credit saying he was radicalized months ago. That hasn't been confirmed, but in light of the number of people and lack of explanation it makes sense.
I agree that energy security should be more of a priority. But as someone who actually works on software that controls the electrical grid I can tell you a lot of the problem is management. They want things, don't understand the security ramifications, and then when you point them out they call you paranoid. You could fix that today with $0. R&R defective management. It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we're not allowed to.
The impact is highly dependent on the individual. Which is what makes it dangerous. Some experience no ill effects. Some have vivid and frequent flashbacks years after trying it just once. Regardless of that you are altering your brain chemistry in an unpredictable way that can have permanent results. Every time I did it I felt it changed my personality to a certain degree. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. While it won't kill you it's much like playing psychological Russian roulette.
That, or Schrodinger's cat allows for Schrodinger's rats.
That's true. But it's hard to get excited just yet. Until the theory is proven it's just another theory. Not insignificant. But not proven success either.
Yes, that's true. But I guess the question comes down to one of reasonability. How much is enough to inspire people to create and innovate, and yet still give consideration to masses of people who struggle to buy food every month? By no means am I a socialist. But a responsible capitalist realizes when he's got a good thing going rather than being blinded by greed.
"If I were a musician I probably wouldn't care how much money I'm making if a group of racial nationalists (or some other group of people, say PETA for example, I just think are assholes for that matter) are using my work as part of their message."
I think this issue is largely overblown. If some joker uses a song I wrote, I would hope my fans are smart enough to figure out that I don't necessarily agree with someone just because they used my song.
You can release your art to the world or keep it all to yourself. But after you release it then it kind of goes where it goes. And there's good and bad in that. I find it somewhat ridiculous that they expect to maintain control and have their art reach as many people as possible. You mention racial nationalists which are high profile. Obviously a group most people would disagree with. Charles Manson coopted Helter Skelter. Does that mean he was endorsed by the Beatles? No, of course not. And most rational people understand that.
The music industry as a whole has changed. The big corporations haven't figured that out yet. All they know is they're hemorrhaging the money they used to make and they don't know why. For years the game was simple. Find decent artist, preferably young and exploitable, sign artist into lopsided contract in return for putting up capital to record, and pay radio to play the crap out of single until millions of copies sold. If artist pisses you off, air play stops and artist goes away. They had control of every aspect of the game and made billions.
Now anyone with garage band can make an album, market it for free on social media, and make all their money off of shows, t-shirt sales, and the like. Radio is pretty much dead. Streaming services are leveraging back catalogs for music companies but it's no where near the money they used to make. Granted with this new model finding good music is like finding a needle in the haystack. There's a lot of noise. But there's also a lot of interesting art that never would have been released under the previous model because it doesn't fit the maximize profit formula used by the big guys.
I kind of like where we are. Most of the artists I like are adjusting, and we're getting greedy jerks who don't care about music anyway out of the picture. The artist takes all of the pie now and I feel that's how it should be. They're the ones creating it.
Facebook is just looking for another way to potentially monetize it for the dead industry. All the points you list are precisely why it doesn't matter. Do it or don't do it. The sun has already set.
It's most certainly about the fidelity. As someone pushing 50 I have been collecting vinyl since I was a kid. I'm glad to see it coming back. It doesn't really bother me if you don't like it. If you can't distinguish the difference between an LP and MP3 that's your loss I'd say. Granted LP is not portable, requires a really good system to fully appreciate, takes up more space, and degrades over time. All of those are true. But for myself I find it to be a superior format. I like being able to have the full size cover art, and words I can actually see. As my eyes get older I really appreciate that more and more. Usually I record it into the PC using a firewire interface at 96k/24 to a wav file. And then file the record and play the wavs. In this way I reduce wear, and get my portability. And have sound quality that is far superior to CD let alone MP3. DVD-audio is the only digital format that comes close.
Lol!!! I see the irony. But moving wouldn't fix any of those problems and I'd rather fix it than run away.
I'm not sure where you live but it can't be in the US. I like the US, I don't want to move somewhere else. But let's not pretend there are no problems here.
Tell me all about the rule of law in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Yes we pay quite a bit for police. They use their funding largely for union protectionism. They're all about writing tickets in the name of safety, but if someone breaks into your house they'll show up 2 hours later to write the report. Live in a place without the castle doctrine? Gee, sucks to be you. But boy we sure got the guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals by creating more laws that the criminals ignore anyway. Sure you can call the fire department if your house catches fire. They'll come faster than the police but if it's fully involved they're going to let it burn to the ground anyway because it's too dangerous to fight the fire. Another bastion of union protectionism. Roads? Our infrastructure is falling down. They keep raising the gas tax under the auspices of fixing the roads and then tear the same stretch of road up 5 times over the course of 10 years. The government also withholds the road funds from the state whenever they don't do what they want. They're providing a lot of value there to be sure. Public education more closely resembles public indoctrination. We keep rewriting the history books to favor an increasingly left wing agenda. We dumb down standards so that we can statistically graduate more students (they don't know anything, but hey the education system got paid and did their job by golly). The military is necessary, however it's been long well known that if you're ever selling the military anything you bill triple the cost because they'll gladly pay it (hey, it's not like it's their money). The other stuff you mention is also of various levels of worth mixed in with a whole lot of waste. Healthcare is a joke. The judicial system is a joke. The FDA is a really big joke.
I don't mind paying taxes if we're going to be fiscally responsible. But when things are run the way they are how can you call that anything other than theft? They take our money by force, put us in jail if we don't pay, and then largely fail to do what they promised with the money. The other thing to remember is that before 1920s all of these things were paid by other means. There was no income tax. It was supposed to be temporary. Another promise from a politician.